outlining the weight
of fear,
her doll felt cold,
she knew then
it had always been dead.
She left it
on the pillow,
heir to the wall-paper
roses and wolly-dog.
Shadows clung
to her clothes at the door,
light struck bone.
She walked unshaded
down streets,
climbed a train and watched
the receding
lamps of platform faces.
The lady was kind,
wove stories
with tinsel thread;
but the texture of her voice was strange,
her mouth
seemed painted on wax;
the smile ran red.
1. What are your feelings towards the girl? You must make close reference to different parts of the poem when describing and explaining your feelings towards her.
2. How has the poet's use of the impersonal tone affected your reading of the poem?
2. How has the poet's use of the impersonal tone affected your reading of the poem?
Number your responses accordingly. You can also raise questions or comment on the other features of this poem.
14 comments:
1. i feel pity for the evacuee. Her case "outlin(es) the weight of fear", showing that she is carrying her fears to her new home. Her doll, probably a source of utmost comfort to a seven-year-old, "felt cold" to her as "it has always been dead." Even the doll is of no comfort to her as she leaves it along with the "wall-paper roses and woolly dog", things that she cannot bring with her to her new home. She "walked unshaded down streets", with no one accompanying her on her new journey. There is no mention of any of her family members in the first two stanzas, hence the reader does not know if she has any kin, hence we know that she is lonely. Her loneliness is further emphasized as she has to be evacuated to another part of the country due to the war, to stay with people she has never met, hence the sense of unfamilarity makes her even more lonely.
2. The impersonal tone makes the reader guesses the evacuee's real thoughts and feelings about what she is seeing. The reader will have to try to put themselves in the shoes of the evacuee and try to see things in the point of view of a seven year old evacuee going to another part of the country to live with people she has never met. We must also try to decipher some of the lines and what they mean, for example, in line 17-18, "the receding lamps of platform faces." Can we perhaps say that the little girl is not really noticing the people and events that are happening around her and that she is in a state of confusion, reducing facial features to just "lamps".
Other comments:i notice that the links between the stanzas are weak/ the flow of the lines is not continuous. can i say that the girl's state of mind is not very conscious, i.e. she is not really seeing what is around here and probably walks around in a daze?
each line of this page is rather short and uneven. can i say that it creates a furtive, uncertain mood?
-huaypeng
1. Just like what Huaypeng said, I feel pity for the evacuee. The girl's doll had "felt cold" and thus the girl knew "it has always been dead." The girl must have knew what death was like to know that dead people are always cold, and it must have been very traumatising for her to see death. She also had to leave her home, and she does so unwillingly. when she boarded the train, she "watched the receding lamps of platform faces". She probably looked back till the platform was out of sight, suggesting that she could not bear to leave, and that she rather be in that part of the country.
2. the impersonal tone of the writer makes everything seem very foreign. We only what is happening and guessing how the girl is feeling, but not everything is clearly stated. I think this reflects how the girl is feeling, where she knows where she is going (to another part of the country) but yet she does not really know what is going to happen after that?
1) I feel pity towards the girl, because it is obvious that she does not wish to leave the place she calls her home. From the way "shadows clung to her clothes", it shows a real longing to remain there. Also, like Huay Peng, I think that the case which stood in the hall is a symbol of the fear that she has of being evacuated to somewhere foreign.
It is also pitiful because she is made to grow up very fast, and I feel that this is portrayed in the way Thrilling wrote about how "she knew then it [the doll] had always been dead." The need for the word "then" makes me feel as though she has been forcefully extracted from her dreamy childhood, and forced to accept the harsh reality.
2) I agree with Huay Peng's post that it makes a reader uncertain as to the girl's state of mind, hence it makes us delve deeper by not revealing too much about the girl except her actions and surrondings. I feel that in this subtle way, Thrilling guides us to understand how desolate the girl is feeling.
Basically Huay Peng got to it first. D: Haha.
Other comments: I feel that the girl is hallucinating/not thinking straight too! The descriptions of her surroundings are often very queer, such as the one Huay Peng mentioned above and also the woman whose "smile ran red", which, as discussed in class, shows that she has probably been traumatised by the whole war experience.
And that was written by xina.
Haha, sorry!
1. i pity the girl as well [is there really another emotion? i can't think of one].
the "weight of fear" can be seen to represent the burden she has to shoulder at the tender age of seven. it emphasises xina's point on how she is made to grow up so quickly.
i also like point she made about being forced to see the truth that the girl's doll "had always been dead". this line shows that the girl has always treated the doll not as a toy but as a friend she can confide in. perhaps this implies she is lonely because she has no real human to talk to? my heart goes out to her as she has to accept the loneliness at such a young age.
the doll is also of much importance to the girl. this is shown when "she left [the doll] on the pillow, heir to the wall-paper roses and woolly dog". the wall-paper roses and woolly dog are symbols of things that she like yet unable to take with her as she is evacuated. thus, by leaving these with the doll, she is leaving the doll with what she values and treasures the most. again, this reiterates the fact that the doll is treated as a person she can share her thoughts with.
the word "bone" in the second stanza brings across an eerie/chilling feeling, which matches the point we made in class about the "wax" and how the "lady's smile [runs] red" implies that she has witnessed death. it is pitiful for her to have witnessed these terrible sights when she is only seven, as other children her age are still innocent and blissfully unaware of these sufferings.
as the the "watched the receding lamps of platform faces", it symbolises her leaving her home to a foreign place. the "lamps" give a sense of brightness and hope, and the "faces" show that what she sees are familiar to her. by portraying them as "receding", the poet is trying to bring across the fact that she is entering a place that is dark and shrouded with mystery, a place unfamiliar to her. i pity her as it must be hard for her to be separated from her loved ones and her home due to a war.
in the last stanza, the poet wrote that the lady "wove stories with tinsel thread". the "tinsel thread" used in the poem symbolises the sparkling or glittering effect of the stories the lady told, implying that the stories told held hope. however, the lady's "voice was strange", perhaps because of her accent as she came from a foreign land. this mars the effect the stories tried to produce. it can also be seen as the girl being frightened by the war, hence she is unable to find any hope in her current situation. i pity the girl as she is clearly traumatised by what she is forced to go through.
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2. the poet's use of impersonal tone gives the audience and insight to what the girl is feeling, and stirs up more emotion in us.
the lines "she knew then it has always been dead" hints to us that she is feeling pain as she realises she is left alone and she has lost all her loved ones in the war. it makes me sympathise with her as i read those lines.
the short and sometimes abrupt break in the lines affect the tone of the poem as well. it brings out the idea that the girl is not able to think clearly, hence her thoughts are incoherent and do not flow smoothly. for example, "her mouth seemed painted on wax" is broken into two lines, emphasising on her mouth. it draws my attention to the lady's mouth as the abrupt pause implies that there is something significant about it. this technique is repeated in "outlining the weight of fear", where emphasis is placed on the weight, or the implication of a burden.
sorry... weisin here. no idea why my name changed...
1.i feel pity for the evacuee. at such a young age, she had to be exposed to sufferings, such as witnessing death and having to leave her home and go somewhere else where she is a stranger to everything and everyone. from the quote "her doll felt cold, /she knew then /it had always been dead" we can see that this seven year-old girl already knew what death is like. as for the quote "she left [the doll] /on the pillow", it gives me an impression that by leaving her doll, a toy which most little girls play with when they are young, she decided to put the inner child in her away, showing us that she had grown out of her child-like characteristics at such a young age of seven, thus increasing my pity for her.
2. by using an impersonal tone, the reader is made to guess how the girl is feeling because we do not have an insight of the girl's emotions. this makes the reader feel very distant from the girl, not knowing her true feelings. from the quote "lamps of platform faces", we see that the girl is unfamiliar with everything around her, and everyone looks the same to her. this is seen from the word "lamps" because most lamps look the same. this also provokes a sense of loneliness in the reader while reading this poem because the girl is alone in a foreign country, not knowing anything and having no one to lean on.
sorry. it evokes a sense of loneliness, and not provokes.
1.I feel sorry for the girl as she was forced to leave her home for a foreign place without much prior mental preparation. The second line, case "outlining the weight of fear", shows that the girl is fearing what lies ahead and is worried about her new home. Her childhood companion, the doll, suddenly "felt cold" to the touch, suggesting that the evacuee might have come into contact with corpses. At that point of time, the girl started to see things for what they truly are, the doll "had always been dead". Also, she was forced to grow up and abandon her childlike innocence. The evacuee also becomes more guarded as she is more wary of her surroundings.
2.I agree with Huay Peng that the use of the impersonal tone makes the reader uncertain about the girl's true thoughts and can only make guesses. By not explaining too much, Isobel Thrilling allows us to think deeper and truly see the traumatised state of mind that the girl is in. The reader can also understand the girl's desolation as she steps into a foreign land.
I feel pity for the evacuee. she stood at the door, as "light struck bone". It gives me a mental image of the girl in a state of starvation. She has been reduced to a state which is beyond recognition and what is left of her are skin and bones. Furthermore, she climbed a train and "watched the receding lamps of platform faces". It evokes a sense of hopelessness. She seems to have fallen into an abyss of despondency. She had seen the face of death and she could not fathom what could be any worst.
-jiayi
I feel sympathy towards the little girl. Just like what the others said, the girl is so pityful to experienced such devastation at a young age and to be left alone to fend for herself. she left behind the thing she was most attached to- her doll. As young children often have toys that they are particularly attached to, i feel that by leaving her doll behind, she is somewhat walking away from her childhood, which is a very sad thing to do for a seven year old child.
I also feel that there is a note of resignation in the poem.
Oh darn I didn't post Mavis' post. D: I thought I did, apparently it didn't go through?
Anyway, this is Mavis' post, due one day late. Sorry Mavis, this shows that you shouldn't trust me with anything. xDD
1. Despite running the risk of sounding cliche, i feel pity for the little girl . I wanted to say that i feel empathy for her but then i realise i have never been through war itself before and thus will not know how is it like to be in her shoes.
To a little girl, a doll is a figure of security, a friend that would always be there by her side no matter what and a manifestation of her inner child. I believe that this little girl had seen death and then was forced to leave home to evacuate to a safer place. Her leaving of her beloved doll behind and recognising it as dead object signifies that she is 'leaving her inner child behind' or that her inner child is dead. Most little girls would pretend, or think and imagine their dolls as real living things that can communicate and feel just like they do, however in the evacuee's case, she is forced to grow up faster than other girls her age and leave her childish carefree life behind to adapt to the tough and cruel war life.
By leaving her doll behind, she is leaving her 'friend' behind, signifying that she herself also see the need to grow up, be strong and independent of other people. Only by doing that can she survive the hardships of war.
Again, in the passage 'she walked unshaded down streets' and 'watched the receding lamps of platform faces'. These quotes goes further to show the need for her to be independent for she walked 'unshaded' down street, unshaded being the operative word here. She is unaided, not supported, not helped by anyone or anything but she is still walking down the street. She has to be strong and independent to survive.
When she watched 'the receding lamps of platform faces' it is another way to describe her independence. A little girl travelling alone on the train was bound to be a magnet for concerned passengers. However the faces of the passengers were nothing more than faint images, or lamps as the poem wrote.
It is such a shame that she had to grow up faster than she should be just because she is living under certain circumstances.
2.
The reading of the poem is abrupt and sudden because of the fragmented sentences. In my opinion this gives a certain touch to the poem. Maybe this was how the little girl was feeling. Just like the sentences of the poem, her life had broken up into little pieces.
By Mavis.
I agree, but just wondering, the faces being compared to 'lamps' can also mean that they are hopeful, rather, how to say, lit up?
How does the poet treat and develop the theme of the impact of war on children in this poem?
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